Deficit

The recent news that government revenues are down, combined with the Treasury Department’s announcement that federal borrowing is up, has evoked howls of we-told-you-so from our friends on the left.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Growth solves some problems, but it can't solve the government's spending addiction.

Republicans are pushing a budget-cutting process Democrats say punishes the vulnerable. The real problem is that it's pointless.

But at least Paul Ryan told some hard truths about entitlements.

Are Republicans in the Trump era deficit-hawks-in-name-only? Or does the party still have faithfulness toward reducing the federal deficit in meaningful ways. Between last week’s Republican-forged budget deal that ended a severely flawed, but effective, system of spending caps and the advent of…

This post had been updated.

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

There are fewer and fewer economic principles on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, and any point of consilience will surely be forgotten as some momentary partisan need overwhelms reason and sense. Surely, however, we can all agree on a few points:

Wouldn't it be nice if voters punished politicians who increase budget deficits? Well, according to one research paper, they do.

Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, will defend the White House's budget request in front of the respective congressional committees Wednesday and Thursday. The administration's goal on Capitol Hill this week, according to a White House source, is two-fold: to make a…

Vox interviewed President Obama on Facebook Live Friday. He discussed health care, along with the doomed fate of his health care law. One of the more interesting things he had to say was this:

The players in this election season are, it seems, not interested in talking about the deficit. Too much of a downer. Still, when the giddy days and nights of campaigning are done and the cold grey dawn of governing breaks, someone is going to have to face the facts. Namely, that spending is…

Donald Trump said unequivocally Thursday morning that "this is the time" for government to borrow money for multiple spending priorities, an unusual position for the standard bearer of a GOP that made fiscal restraint one its signature positions during the tea party wave just six years ago.

President Obama's budget is not likely to be passed by Congress. But if it did, the U.S. would be about $26.3 trillion in debt. 

A headline in the Wall Street Journal reads, “U.S. Deficit Shrinks to Level Last Seen in ’07.”  The problem with this headline isn’t its accuracy (although it should say ’08 unless it’s speaking as a percentage of GDP).  The problem is that readers are likely to come away with the false perception…

Yesterday’s presentation by the U.S. Treasury was a comical spectacle—at least for those of us with sardonic senses of humor. The good news? The deficit for FY2014 (which ended September 30) was 29 percent lower than the deficit was in FY2013. Increased corporate tax receipts drove much of the…

The government will be tapped out on Oct 17, according to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.  Unless, that is, Congress takes:

In his weekly radio address, President Obama explained the budget he'll rollout next week, and said, "the truth is, our deficits are already shrinking."

In a statement released at 5 a.m. today, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, blasts the budget the Senate passed very early this morning. Sessions's main concern is that the budget "has zero real deficit reduction" and "never balances."

This week Paul Ryan’s House Budget Committee is set to release its fiscal year 2014 budget, which promises to balance Uncle Sam’s books in 10 years. Ryan’s offering will elicit lamentations from the usual quarters of the mainstream media: House Republicans have lurched sharply to the right,…

Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee, finally released a budget today. Year over year, in this proposed budget, spending jumps dramatically. 

There will be no grand bargain.

President Obama has often talked about the need to reduce the budget deficit. Before his run for the presidency, Senator Obama was rather harsh in his criticism of George Bush's deficits. And in July 2011, during the debt ceiling crisis, the president even addressed Congressional leaders in a talk…

Jay Carney, speaking today at the press briefing:

When it comes to deficit reduction, President Obama and the mainstream press seem to have a fascination with the figure of $4 trillion.  During last year’s first presidential debate, Obama falsely claimed, “I've put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan,” even though he’d done…

Since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, more than $6 trillion dollars has been added to the national debt.

The White House has released limited excerpts of President Obama's State of the Union Address: 

In an interview this morning, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi made the case that we don't have a spending problem. Indeed, Pelosi says, it is wrong to say we have a "spending problem":

President Barack Obama used his second inaugural address Monday to offer an aggressive, unapologetic defense of activist government and to call for a new spirit of unity even as he seeks to move the country even further left.

At his press conference today, President Obama showed that he either thinks he can pull the wool over Americans’ eyes through the sheer force of his own outrageous rhetoric, or else he really believes his own rhetoric and is living in a fantasyland.  The guess here is that it’s a roughly even mix…

White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that "deficit reduction is not a worthy goal unto itself":

Having avoided the "fiscal cliff," we will now be in jeopardy of breaking our necks when we collide with the "debt ceiling." The responsible thing to do, we are already being told by the New York Times is ... to raise the ceiling:

Metro stops in Washington, D.C. will now feature advertisements that warn of overspending. "Talk Is Cheap," the tagline on a series of ads reads. "Overspending Is Not."

After hailing the passage of the "fiscal cliff" last night, President Barack Obama laid down a marker on the debt ceiling: It will not, he said, be up for negotiation.

It is important to understand that the fiscal cliff is a charade. There are, to be sure, many conscientious debt reformers working to avert our proclaimed year-end epic fall​—​along with many cynics who are using the occasion to advance pet projects that will make the debt problem worse. But all…

The fiscal cliff is a diversion, designed by politicians to conceal their inability to come to grips with the fact that they continue to spend too much, and refuse to reform a tax structure that reduces the competitiveness of American companies in world markets. No matter what deal is cut, whether…

"President Obama's 'Plan' Adds $8.6 Trillion to the Debt," the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee contends. Here's a chart put together by the Republicans on the committee to explain how Obama's plan adds to the debt:

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Barack Obama from the Senate floor this morning for not offering any specifics on spending cuts.

Seventy-five percent of the new revenue pulled in by President Barack Obama's "fiscal cliff" plan would go toward new spending, not toward deficit reduction, the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee contends. Here's a chart, detailing how money from the new tax hikes would be distributed:

A chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee shows that "U.S. Per Person Debt [Is] Now 35 Percent Higher than that of Greece."

From December 1941 to August 1945, the United States of America joined the other Allied powers and fought against the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific, during the greatest and most destructive war in all of human history.  Victory required the complete dedication of the American citizenry, as…

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll projects a 5-point turnout advantage for Democrats over Republicans (34 to 29 percent) yet still shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by 1 percentage point — 49 to 48 percent.  This is Romney’s first lead since the summer in Washington Post/ABC…

In a decade, federal spending to pay for the interest on America's debt will exceed total spending on the defense budget by $125 billion, or 20 percent, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Budget Management. The projections are based on President Barack…

The $831,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” that President Obama spearheaded and signed into law requires his administration to release quarterly reports on its effects.  But “the most transparent administration in the history of our country” is now four reports behind schedule and has so far not…

A new report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service finds that the largest federal budget item is spending on welfare programs. To support the 83 programs that CRS identified as welfare programs, the federal government spends $745.84 billion. 

In the wake of the Treasury Department’s newly released summary of federal spending for 2012, it’s now possible to detail just how profligate the Obama years have been.  Here’s the upshot:  Under Obama, for every $7 we’ve had, we’ve spent nearly $11 (or, to be more exact, $10.95).  That’s like a…

As Mike Warren highlights, moderator Martha Raddatz apparently didn’t think Obamacare was important enough to make the cut as one of the nine topics she brought up during the vice presidential debate.  Two other closely related topics that didn’t make her cut were federal spending and the national…

In May 2009, President Obama released his updated budget estimates, which projected that the federal deficit for fiscal year 2012 would be $557 billion (see table S-1).  The Congressional Budget Office now says that the deficit for fiscal year 2012 (which ended on September 30) was about $1.1…

At a townhall-style event in Iowa, Paul Ryan was asked to provide more specifics about the Romney-Ryan economic plan, and he proceeded to talk about Romney's 5-point plan for about eight minutes. Buzzfeed posts the video: 

It’s a couple days old, but nevertheless worth watching: Here’s the clip of President Obama’s interview with David Letterman (which Steve Hayes discusses in greater detail here), during which Obama shows that he apparently has no idea how big our national debt is — apparently even to the nearest…

In an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, President Barack Obama suggested that most of the country’s debt was accumulated under George W. Bush, pretended that he has offered a solution to these problems, said that he does not know the total U.S. national debt, and claimed that the…

On Monday, the Romney campaign trumpeted a plan to change the campaign's direction and "reinforce more specifics" on policy. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a copy of a memo from GOP political veteran David Smick, addressed to the Romney campaign, with advice on how to "revamp" the television ad…

In his speech Wednesday night, Bill Clinton said, "President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president—not me or any of my predecessors—could have repaired all the damage in just four years." Yet, under FDR, who inherited a much weaker economy than Obama did, real GDP growth…

Always looking "forward," President Obama has asked Bill Clinton—who was elected to the presidency 20 years ago—to speak tonight and suggest to the American people (whether explicitly or implicitly) that this is really a choice between Clinton and George W. Bush, rather than between Obama and Mitt…

The United States Treasury reports that the total public outstanding debt is: $16,015,769,788,215.80. This is the first time in American history debt has eclipsed the $16 trillion mark.

Regardless of one's precise political peccadilloes, most of us agree this is one of the most important elections of our lifetime. However, one gets the feeling the Romney campaign, and even the RNC, either aren't aware of the stakes or, perhaps, just not sure of the best way to convey those stakes…

In an interview on March 22, two weeks before Mitt Romney would win the Wisconsin primary and effectively end the race for the Republican nomination, Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes asked about his embrace of Paul Ryan’s budget.

In a recent campaign television ad, President Barack Obama states, "I believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class. Asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way." The last part--committing to pay down the national…

Senator Mike Lee criticized President Obama's and the Democrats' plan to raise taxes, saying that "their proposal would leave 94% of this year's deficit intact, which makes it an inherently unserious proposal insofar as it relates to deficit reduction."

The House Financial Committee just concluded grilling banker Jamie Dimon on risky financial bets his firm, JPMorgan Chase, made that resulted in losses of at least $2 billion last month. Today’s hearing follows up on last week’s Senate Banking Committee grilling of Dimon on the same bad bets.

The eurozone might be cracking up, but as far as debt goes, America appears to be in worse shape than the entire eurozone in the long run. According to a new chart set to be released later today by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, America is on track "to add three times more debt…

New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie blasted President Obama in a speech earlier today at a conservative conference in Chicago

I have been reading A Time for Choosing, the wonderful new e-book from RCP’s Carl Cannon and Tom Bevan about the 2012 campaign, and was really struck by this passage about the Democratic counter-punch to Team Romney. Cannon and Bevan note how Democrats decided to attack Romney as:

I received this smart email from a reader:

The tide sweeping from Greece across Europe and into the United States is washing away support for austerity, in some cases reinforcing opposition to it, largely from the left. President Obama is delighted at this support for his refusal to cut spending in the face of mounting deficits, and the…

If you ever find yourself engaged in a debate over why our national debt — now $15.7 trillion —has risen $5.9 trillion over the past four years and $15.4 trillion over the past fifty years, NPR has released a useful chart (based on figures provided by the White House Office of Management and…

The Republican Senate Budget Committee will release this new chart later today, showing that the "U.S. Spends More Per Person Than Portugal, Italy, Greece, Or Spain."

This business with Greece goes on and on, and one begins to think, automatically, of Sisyphus and his rock. Only in this case, you start pulling for the rock.

Bloomberg reports: 

President Obama likes to say that a strong America abroad rests on a strong America at home. What he and his administration continue to ignore, however, is that a prosperous America at home has in no small way rested for decades on America’s global military preeminence.  

Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, published a study last week about the disastrous effect of Obamacare on the budget deficit--in direct contrast to claims by the Obama administration (supported by the Congressional Budget Office) that the law would reduce the…

The cost of President Obama is $5,027,761,476,484.56 (so far!), according to CNS News:

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will release this chart later today, clearly showing that America's debt is greater than the combined debt of the entire Eurozone and the U.K.:

Over the next ten years, Obamacare will add more than $340 billion to the federal deficit, according to a new study reported on by the Washington Post: 

The latest chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, showing that under President Obama's budget plan, debt would be $73,000 per American in 2022:

The Miami Herald's Marc Caputo reports that Florida congressman Connie Mack IV, a candidate for the GOP nomination for Senate in 2012, called the budget recently passed by the House of Representatives a "joke."

An alarming chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee showing the "rate of debt increase during presidents' 4-year terms." 

In a book review of White House Burning titled, "The Endless Spending Spree: America's debt is $15.6 trillion and growing. Instead of raising taxes, here's an idea: Let's try capitalism," James Grant writes:

Senior White House advisor David Plouffe — President Obama’s campaign manager in 2008 — told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that, when it comes to dealing with our colossal deficits and debt, “the right approach is the president’s approach.” That approach, Plouffe added, “gets our deficit on a…

At the end of 2008 — the year President Obama was elected —our national debt was $9.986 trillion. It’s now $15.542 trillion and counting — a increase of $5.556 trillion, or 56 percent, in just over three years.  With that staggering — and unparalleled — record of fiscal profligacy in mind, let’s…

Paul Ryan explains the Republican budget in an oped in today's Wall Street Journal: 

"[T]he latest version of Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, released today, does far more than defeat a rival who’s decided to forfeit the field," AEI expert Jim Pethokoukis writes. "It presents a bold and sweeping solution to America’s twin problems: too much debt and too little economic growth."

President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing. 

The New York Times: "In his new budget blueprint, President Obama is proposing to tax dividends of the wealthiest taxpayers as ordinary income subject to their top income-tax rate"

Liz Cheney appeared on Fox News this morning to discuss President Obama's cuts to the military:

Paul Ryan was right to cast his vote against the Balanced Budget Amendment on Friday. We need an amendment that treats the disease (excess spending), not the symptom (deficits). We need an amendment that would limit government spending, not set a tax trap. Instead of a Balanced Budget Amendment, we…

The National Debt Clock now shows the national debt of the United States of America is higher than $15,000,000,000,000.00. According to the White House, when President Obama was elected — just three years ago — the national debt was less than $10 trillion (see table S-9 on p. 134).  At a campaign…

The Congressional Budget Office’s recently released scorecard for fiscal year 2011 begs a simple question: Why is the federal government spending nearly one-third more money now than it did just five years ago? The CBO says that the federal government spent $2,729,000,000,000.00 in 2007 and…

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates that the federal deficit for the recently completed fiscal year (2011) was $1.3 trillion, or 8.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This is historic stuff: Prior to the year that President Obama was inaugurated, the only deficits in…

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 20 percentage points (56 to 36 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. This marks the first time since the spring of 2010, shortly after Obamacare’s passage, that 3-straight Rasmussen polls have shown at least…

“The fundamental question for you is not how we got here, but where you want the country to go,” said Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, to the members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (or the supercommittee) today. “What role do you and your…

Earlier this evening, the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending, 269-161. Sixty-six Republicans voted against the bill, titled the Budget Control Act of 2011, while an equal number (95) of Democrats voted for and against it.

John Bolton has just issued a thoughtful statement raising “serious questions ... about the national-security implications of the proposed deal to raise the Federal debt ceiling.” Bolton calls attention to the worrisome short-term defense cuts that the deal makes likely, and to the huge medium- and…

The Hill reports that the Congressional Budget Office has scored the Boehner debt ceiling plan as reducing the deficit more than Harry Reid's plan -- and that's without resorting to gimmickry regarding assumptions about war spending:

Why, exactly, do we need to extend the debt limit to the point where the federal government can borrow another $2.4 trillion (hardly a nice round number) — about the same amount of money, even in inflation-adjusted dollars, that we borrowed to fight all of World War II? Because, as Treasury…

The intentions of Democrats are only the best. They want all of the old to have lavish retirements, all of the young to have scholarships, verse-penning cowboys to have festivals funded by government, and everyone to have access to all the best health care, at no cost to himself. In the face of a…

‘I’m the president of the United States, and I want to make sure that I am not engaging in scare tactics. And I’ve tried to be responsible and somewhat restrained so that folks don’t get spooked.” So said President Obama at his June 29 debt ceiling press conference. Two weeks later, CBS Evening…

Soon after Mitch McConnell joined the debt limit talks, his suspicions grew. An agreement with President Obama on raising the limit by $2.4 trillion​—​and tied to serious spending cuts​—​looked impossible. The more he heard from Obama and his aides in the private sessions at the White House, the…

The debt ceiling negotiations have become a tedious game of dorm room poker. Barack Obama is the dealer, and the deck is stacked in his favor. He’s enjoying the game. Even so, he’s not as good as he thinks he is: Witness his comment last week to House Republican leader Eric Cantor, “Eric, don’t…

Watching Obama's press conference this afternoon, I was reminded of Jimmy Carter's malaise speech.

According to a poll conducted earlier this week by CNN and Opinion Research Corporation, 66 percent of Americans would support a plan that would raise the debt ceiling "only if a balanced budget amendment were passed by both houses of Congress and substantial spending cuts and caps on future…

Senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), a member of the so-called Gang of Six, slams the Senate for dodging votes and offers support for the House Republicans’ recently passed legislation to raise the debt limit in exchange for cutting, capping, and balancing federal spending.  The House plan is the only…

In a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger writes, “Next to generalized distemper in Republican circles over their presidential candidates, the second most-offered opinion on the race is that people wish Paul Ryan were running. The Wisconsin congressman and House Budget chairman…

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has released a statement on the Gang of Six deficit reduction proposal:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Budget Committee, has just released a statement today that criticizes both Senate Democrats and President Obama for lacking leadership on producing a budget. Noting the Gang of Six plan's "serious flaws," Sessions says the president needs to show…

President Obama repeatedly insists that the debt ceiling must be raised by at least $2.4 trillion. Why this particular amount, rather than, say, an even $1 trillion or $2 trillion? Because $2.4 trillion is Obama’s estimate for what it would take to get him through the next election without needing…

This afternoon Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) unveiled his own proposal to reduce to deficit. The plan, which purports to reduce the deficit by over $9 trillion over the next decade, does so by cutting discretionary spending and entitlements as well as by raising some revenue and counting savings on…

It was bad enough when Moody’s Investor Services placed America’s credit rating under review for a downgrade because our politicians can’t agree to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Now Standard & Poor’s has taken an even tougher stance. It is putting U.S. debt on “Credit Watch negative,” with…

On a conference call with bloggers today, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich offered advice to congressional Republicans who are currently in the middle of debt limit negotiations, saying it was their “moment to stand up to Obama.”

In his press conference today, President Obama shamelessly and condescendingly said, “Congress has run up the credit card, and we now have an obligation to pay our bills.” Yet Obama’s average annual rate of deficit spending in his first three years in office (including his 2012 budget) has been 9.7…

At his press conference Friday, President Barack Obama repeatedly claimed that the American people support a “balanced approach” and “shared sacrifice” when it comes to a debt and deficit solution.

This morning, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Paul Ryan blasted the president for not doing what needs to be done to avert a crisis. “The president is just unwilling to go anywhere close to the kind of spending cuts we’re going to have to have if we want to avert a debt crisis," Ryan said.

Mitch McConnell’s plan, as Eric Cantor and Jim DeMint said tonight, is “going nowhere.” Which is where it deserved to go. It was too clever by half, transparently cynical, probably unconstitutional, and Rube Goldberg-like in its incomprehensibility.  

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley asked President Obama whether he “can tell the folks at home that, no matter what happens, the Social Security checks are gonna go out on August the 3rd?” President Obama replied that it wasn’t just Social Security checks that would need to go out and that “I…

President Obama repeatedly insists that we need a “balanced approach” to dealing with our annual deficits, which have been twice as high during his tenure as during any other post-World War II presidency. In a memo sent yesterday to Republican colleagues, Paul Ryan responds to Obama’s claim with…

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell challenged President Obama’s claim to support trillions in serious spending cuts as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling – cuts the president says show he’s ready to anger Democrats to get a deal.

Yuval Levin writes: 

Imagine the reaction if President Obama and congressional Democrats had released a sweeping health care bill, drafted in closed-door meetings, and demanded its approval by Congress immediately. There would have been national outrage over the secrecy, lack of time for public hearings, and the…

Yesterday, Harry Reid cancelled a planned Senate recess for the week of July 4, which Republican senators such as Jeff Sessions and Marco Rubio had been pushing, since the government is rapidly approaching the debt ceiling deadline of August 2. But will the Senate actually make any movement toward…

In Wednesday’s press conference, Barack Obama said:

Lawrence Lindsey writes in the Wall Street Journal: 

Jay Cost has written that, in 2008, Barack Obama ran “a bandwagon campaign with a simple purpose. When your candidate lacks the experience traditionally thought to be necessary to run the government, and you have two wars and an economic slowdown, you need something to cover the gap. And that…

Tim Pawlenty projects in his economic plan that the gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 5 percent in real (inflation adjusted) dollars every year for a decade. The debate is now raging over whether such projections are realistic, but the more important consideration is whether the growth…

A new CNN poll shows which issues Americans say will most influence their votes in next year’s presidential election. The issues that respondents most often listed as being “extremely important” were the economy (51 percent), health care (45 percent), unemployment (45 percent), and federal deficits…

Milwaukee

Recent polling shows that Americans think we have a spending problem, not a taxing problem, and that Republicans are the party they trust to deal with that problem. A USA Today/Gallup poll released this week shows that Americans trust Republicans over Democrats on the deficit issue by a whopping…

Kenosha, Wisc.

In Obama’s speech on the budget deficit earlier this month, the president went out of his way to praise the free market, but balanced it against the need for collective action sponsored by the government:           

In an important piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Lew Lehrman explains the connection between monetary and fiscal policy—fiscal policy will almost inevitably tend toward deficits and debt if the monetary authorities are (virtually) unconstrained in financing that debt. Until it all comes…

There’s a truism of budgeting that goes: The player who makes the first move always loses. That’s because the player with the second move has the opportunity to focus on the drawbacks of what the first player proposed. It’s one reason why some Republicans were nervous about House GOP budget…

It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. Who are these 50 million Americans? Many are somebody’s grandparents, maybe one of yours, who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor…

So the sovereign debt of the American government has been downgraded. Not last week by Standard & Poor’s, which merely put it on negative watch. But last November, by Dagong, China’s rating agency, which down-rated it from AA (its highest rating) to A+, and rated its outlook “negative.” Of course,…

Here's your least surprising news of the day, courtesy the Washington Post:

Tax Day 2011 comes in the middle of President Obama’s push for raising taxes to tackle deficit spending. The president’s budget calls for raising both taxes and deficits. But last week, Obama said that we need to reduce deficits, and he announced his intention, as he put it, “to reduce spending in…

The White House just sent out this message, announcing that President Obama will "Hold Town Halls to Discuss his Vision for Bringing Down our Deficit Based on Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity":

Talk about a successful budgetary proposal: House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would cut 46 percent and $4.4 trillion from proposed deficit spending under President Obama’s budget, reform Medicare and Medicaid to put these programs on solid financial footing, and repeal Obamacare.…

Charles Krauthammer puts the Ryan vs. Obama budget debate into perspective in his Washington Post column: 

Paul Ryan makes his case in today's Washington Post:

Given President Obama’s inference in his recent speech that, if only every other president had been as responsible on deficit spending as he has been, things would be great, it is well worth revisiting Obama’s actual track record versus other recent presidents (detailed more fully here). It’s also…

Let me guess -- Nancy Pelosi was first in line.

The White House communications operation has expended considerable effort over the past week to portray President Obama as serious about dealing with debt and deficits. Most of their scrambling came after House Budget chairman Paul Ryan presented a 2012 budget blueprint that included significant…

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin hits the nail on the head in a piece titled, “Obama’s do-over budget.” Rubin writes:

In The Week, David Frum claims that House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s proposed budget “actually increases the debt over the medium term — by even more [than] President Obama’s budget would,” thereby “worsening … the debt situation over the period from 2012 to 2021.” In today’s New York…

Here’s what President Obama’s hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune (which endorsed Obama in 2008), has to say about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budgetary proposal and how much leadership each of the two men is providing:

As John McCormack noted earlier, Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., got caught on a conference call directing fellow Democrats to always use the word "extreme" when discussing budget cuts. There's just one problem -- Americans apparently know that the situation is very, very dire. Based on this poll…

Why am I not surprised to be typing this headline?: Joe Biden apologizes for locking a reporter in a closet.

It's only been a few weeks since Manchin last made a stink about Obama and his fellow Democrats' total lack of leadership. Well, Manchin's not done putting his party through the wringer yet:

Already responsible (along with Congress) for $3.3 trillion in actual or projected deficit spending in just his first two years in office — thereby breaking the prior record of $3.2 trillion for an entire presidency — President Obama has proposed an unserious budget that, even according to his own…

"How Obama turned on a dime toward war"

The New F***ing Tone Is Here.

At a breakfast meeting this morning with reporters, President Obama's top economic adviser Austan Goolsbee maintained that the president's budget proposal is "sustainable." Goolsbee was asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD about Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner's testimony last week to the Senate Budget…

McClatchy wonders how on earth the president can claim that he's not going to add to the deficit following his bloated budget proposal:

As Matt Continetti notes, Yuval Levin writes at the Corner that "it’s important to remember that our federal government budgets itself year by year, and in making next year’s budget it is not bound by this year’s budget." Thus, the president's budget for this year means something; his projections…

Today on Capitol Hill, Senators Claire McCaskill and Bob Corker introduced legislation, the Commitment to American Prosperity (CAP) Act, meant to cap federal spending. The bill would require spending as a percentage of GDP to decrease over the next decade to the 40-year average of 20.6 percent.

Some of the commentary I have read from the left on President Obama's State of the Union address seems to praise it in the same way that Ed Kilgore of the New Republic does:

In his State of the Union address, President Obama seemed to have two goals: the first was to sound centrist; the second was to try to convince everyone to accept the radical leftward policy lurch of the last two years and simply move on from there. As the tension between these two goals suggests,…

Having vastly increased non-defense, non-entitlement spending in the process of racking up unprecedented deficits, President Obama is now expected to call in his State of the Union address for freezing such spending at these new, much higher, levels. NPR reports that Obama will call for a 5-year…

In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for "responsible" efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President's expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it's worth keeping in mind his…

The good, the bad, and the ugly. That about describes the state of play in America.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former House majority leader Dick Armey combines with his FreedomWorks partner Matt Kibbe to suggest “What Congress Should Cut” in order to reduce the deficit and debt.

Good news for the president. After nearly two years of sliding downward, his job approval numbers have ticked up a little bit. The average of major media polls in December had him clocking in with a job approval of about 45 percent. As of early January, his numbers are up to about 49 percent. The…

Jim Capretta offers some outstanding advice in National Review about the upcoming budget battles. He writes, "Republicans need to convince voters, especially independents, that their plan is one of sensible, pragmatic stewardship of the taxpayers’ money, and that the president and his allies in…

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said this afternoon that contrary to claims that Obamacare will reduce the deficit, it will actually increase the deficit by roughly $700 billion. 

Via Mary Katharine Ham:

Did America hold an election last month? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Congress is back in town, and the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate are acting as though the shellacking of 2010 never happened. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, oblivious as usual, have stuffed this Christmas turkey of a…

If you want to know why this economic forecaster is turning grey before your very eyes, or your investment adviser is mumbling incoherently when you dial him up for advice, consider the three important reports that were issued at the end of this week. The jobs report attracted most of the…

The Obama administration today announced a two-year pay freeze for all federal workers (excluding military). Phil Klein puts the policy into perspective:

The recently released draft proposal from the federal debt commission offers some useful ideas for reducing runaway federal spending on health care. Even a committee comprising two-thirds Democrats is suggesting tort reform to curb wasteful malpractice lawsuits (Obamacare would do nothing about…

Does a Nobel prize winning economist have any obligation to demonstrate basic statistical honesty, even when editorializing? In his attempt to support his tedious and wholly unconvincing argument that the public sector has not grown substantially under Obama, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman…

According to Reuters, the Obama administration plans to tackle the growing deficit ... but not yet. That will come after the 2010 midterm election in November, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs:

Chinese citizens can’t vote in national elections. Not at home. And, of course, not in America. American citizens can. That combination of circumstances is likely to have an effect on U.S. trade policy as Congress settles in for the final weeks before the November 2 elections. President Obama and…